Death Thieves

by Julie Wright

  Tag maneuvered out of Raik’s grasp, brought his hands together and slammed them into Professor Raik’s chest. Professor Raik buckled under the blow. Tag punched him hard in the face, knocking Professor Raik unconscious.

  Tag jumped to his feet and grabbed for one of the guns in the process. He then grabbed my hand and said, “Are you okay?”

  I nodded dumbly, my hands running over my body to check to make sure I really was okay.

  He kept the gun trained on Professor Raik in case he decided to get up again. “Did you get what you needed?”

  “Winter dies!” I said, my voice the horrible shriek of the inconsolable.

  “Everyone dies sometime, Summer. Did you get what you needed for Jay?”

  I’d forgotten about Jay—forgotten about Jen and their babies. I shook my head.

  “What are you looking for; I probably know where it is.” He went behind the desk, still keeping the gun trained to where the soldiers and Professor Raik lay unmoving on the floor. “We can’t stay here; there was a housedresser out there, and she’s likely called for help by now.”

  “She’s running by now. She’s the one who let me in.”

  Tag nodded. “We still need to hurry. What do you need?”

  “I need to know where the regents are. The one who recently adopted is staying in town. And I need two Orbitals.”

  “Why two?”

  “One for Jay and one for—”

  “One for you. So you were going to leave me?” His jaw muscles flexed as though he were grinding teeth.

  I shrugged lamely. “You said you wouldn’t help me.”

  “Well, I’ve obviously changed my mind.” He handed me the gun. “We need to get these guys tied up. If we leave them, they’ll be able to sound alarms and cause trouble. If they move while I work, shoot them.” He removed the rings from all three of the unconscious men and put the rings in his pocket. He tied them up, grabbed the other guns on the ground, and said, “Let’s go.”

  “But we didn’t—”

  He rolled his eyes. “You’re in the wrong place. The soldiers are given orders to guard the regents when the regents are in town. We have a schedule in the barracks, and any of us who’ve pulled guard duty . . .” Tag pointed at himself. “Knows exactly where we’re going, because we’ve been there before and won’t even have any trouble getting in.”

  “What about the Orbitals?”

  “Kept in Raik’s office at the barracks.”

  “Oh.” I felt stupid. I broke into the wrong place. All this drama and Tag had all the answers. I also felt angry. If he had all the answers, he should’ve helped me yesterday when I asked for help.

  But I didn’t regret coming into Professor Raik’s house. I grabbed my file and stuffed it in my backpack. “Then let’s go.”

  Tag tased and knocked out the driver of Raik’s car and dragged him off into the bushes before we could leave.

  “I’ve always hated that guy,” Tag said as we got in the car and he lifted it from its parking place by the house. We tracked on the rails near the barracks and Tag pulled to the side. He turned to me. “You have to stay here.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you kind of stand out, and there are more than two soldiers in the barracks. We’d be dead before you could say, ‘bad idea.’ So stay here. I mean it.”

  “I’m not a child. You don’t need to repeat yourself.”

  He made a face at that and got out. He leaned his head back in. “And stay down. If anyone sees you, they’ll wonder why Raik left you in the car.”

  I agreed and slid down to the floor, where I scrunched in a ball to keep myself out of sight.

  Tag was back relatively quickly with three Orbitals. He threw them in my seat and hurried to track the car and get us moving. He didn’t even glance at me beyond a quick verification to make sure I was still there.

  “I don’t know where to find Jay.” I hated the admission. It made me look stupid and disorganized. But Jay had said he’d meet me at the dorms and I didn’t think we could go back there. That would be the first place searched when Raik woke up and got himself out of his office.

  “Don’t worry. I know where to find him.”

  “How?”

  “I looked up his IDR location.”

  “Oh.” Again I felt stupid. “You know you could have helped me yesterday and saved me a whole lot of trouble.”

  “Yes. I could’ve.”

  “Why didn’t you. Why today and not yesterday?” I climbed up into the passenger seat, no longer able to stand being curled into a ball on the floor.

  “Yesterday, you weren’t getting shot at. It made a difference.”

  “Oh. Well, I’m still mad at you.”

  “I know.”

  I wanted to hit him for that. Instead, I stared out the window to the beauty suit of San Francisco. It was beautiful. A whole lot of beautiful hiding a whole lot of ugly. I opened my mouth to try to apologize for being willing to leave him, to yell at him for making me make that choice, to tell him once and for all that I loved him.

  But he was braking.

  And I looked around to see where we were. We were at a little restaurant. Jay was sitting at a seat by the window staring out into the world.

  “Stay!” Tag ordered again.

  “Yeah, ’cause you ordering me around’s going to make it happen. I don’t think so.” I got out to the sound of him cussing under his breath.

  I tapped on the glass, startling Jay to attention. He saw me standing with Tag and jumped out of his chair, nearly toppling it over to get to us. He rushed out of the restaurant. As the door of the restaurant closed, the computer voice thanked Jay Savage for dining with them today.

  “Get in the car,” Tag said, pointing to the car we’d stolen.

  Jay stopped short. “That’s Professor Raik’s car.”

  “Yes, which is the best vehicle to be approaching the regent’s apartments in, don’t you think?”

  Jay nodded and moved to get in the car.

  Tag stopped him. “Ditch your IDR. If anyone watching sees you going near those apartments, you’ll be ex-ed before you can blink. Regents don’t mess around.”

  Jay took off his ring and tossed it in a recycle bin.

  We got in the car, Tag lifted it from the tracks, and flew us down the coastline until we reached a place where the housing areas were all on the ground. He tracked and turned to Jay. “Getting babies from the arms of a woman who has loved them for the last several months is going to be impossible. All she knows is that she is the child’s mother, and you are coming to kidnap her kid. Moms fight for their kids.”

  I snorted. “You never met my mother.”

  Tag shot me a look that made me shut up all other sarcastic remarks.

  “Dads fight for their kids, too.” Jay’s level tone of calm anger left me with little wonder who would win this battle.

  The car braked. “We don’t have much time, Jay. I don’t how long Raik and the guys will be out. They’ll know where his car has gone. They can see where I’m at, even if the two of you stay in their blind spots.”

  “You didn’t kill him?”

  “No, I didn’t kill him. Do you have a problem with my method of help, Savage?”

  Jay looked like he’d bitten off what he’d plan to say and gave his head a single, sharp shake.

  “When I say this woman is the mother of these children, I mean it. She loves those kids.”

  “So will their real mother.”

  “You mean like she loves the ones she’s got?”

  Jay glared at Tag. “Those aren’t hers.”

  “But they’re still babies. They’re still babies needing a mother and father and someone to love them and show them how to grow up normal. When you go, what will happen to those babies? Will you just leave them there?”

  Jay’s anger turned to shock. “Of course not! We’re not going to leave helpless babies to die!”

  “Then what will you do?” Tag whispered the question.<
br />
  Jay stared at his hands, seeming for the first time since he showed up in my dorm room, confused. “We’ll have to take them with us. That’s the only way, isn’t it? They’ll die if we leave them here—even if we leave them with someone—they’ll only have until they’re three.” Jay looked up, his eyes glistening with tears.

  “So you do love them—those babies that aren’t yours?”

  Jay inhaled sharply. “Yeah. I guess I do.”

  “Good.” Tag nodded to the guns in the back. “Take one of those.” Tag got out of the car and looked at me. He opened his mouth, but I stopped him before he could order me to stay.

  “Save your breath.” I pulled a gun from the back seat, too.

  “Fine. Great, take a weapon. Do you have any idea how to shoot it?”

  “No, but neither does Jay, and you gave him one.”

  Jay shrugged, indicating I was right about his weaponry skills.

  Tag tightened his mouth into a thin line and reset each of the guns. “None of them are on tase. We don’t have that kind of time. So don’t pull the trigger unless you plan to down someone forever, got it?”

  We nodded and followed him toward the buildings.

  I glanced around me. This was one nice neighborhood. “Wow,” I muttered. “They could’ve been rich babies.” Jay glared at me. “What? I’m just saying . . .”

  “Summer?” Tag said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Shut up.”

  I did as instructed.

  Tag had his gun held ready as he approached the door. He didn’t allow the door to decide if it would glow green or red, he simply shot out the doorknob and kicked the door in.

  I hadn’t expected the gun to be so loud and nearly dropped my own gun in surprise at the staccato beat of each bullet flying from the barrel. We stormed the house.

  Tag took out the two surprised soldiers. I wondered if he knew the soldiers—if it hurt him to down them. It hurt me to watch. Real people—really gone.

  The woman inside of the room the soldiers had been guarding held one of the babies. Her eyes went wide with fear as she glanced down toward the cradle where the other baby was.

  I heard a muffled crying, my ears still feeling stuffed from the deafening sound of the gun. The babies were crying. The woman was crying, her sleek red hair sticking to her face as she shook her head.

  Jay lowered his gun, unable to hold it steady while she held one of the babies. “I want my children.”

  His hard voice left no room for argument. Yet, she stood there clutching the child and shaking her head. “They’re mine! I’m their mother!”

  Jay walked right up to her. Tag kept his weapon trained on the woman. I couldn’t, afraid I might accidentally shoot her or the babies. I didn’t think I could do either and live with myself after. The regent’s wife rushed to the cradle, but Jay slid in between her and the cradle obstructing her path. She nearly ran right into him.

  “Summer! Get the baby.” Jay directed, not taking his eyes off the woman. She panicked at his words and tried to lunge around him to the cradle. He maneuvered and stayed in front of her. She held the child in her arms so tightly I feared she’d crush it.

  I picked up the one in the cradle. The little girl had a green bow in her feather-fine hair. She smelled like fresh flowers as if she’d just come from a bath. She was heavy and much bigger than I’d expected. The babies in the public nursery were always so small that the size of this baby surprised me. She was still crying, likely terrified from the sound of the guns. I backed away behind Tag with her in my arms.

  “Give me the other one, and no one else will get hurt.” Jay slung the gun over his shoulder and held out his hands to the woman. She began backing away toward the windows which I realized, after a moment, were doors.

  “Jay! The doors!”

  He lunged for the woman, catching her up in his arms and pinching at her shoulder. A cry escaped her lips, and she released the baby involuntarily. Jay caught the baby before it could fall too far and pulled away from the woman. Her hands clawed at his face, but he maintained his hold on the infant and fended her off by shoving his shoulder into her chest. He then pulled back, tucked the child into one arm and lifted the gun in his other hand to target on her.

  “My babies!” she screamed. “He’s taking my babies!” Someone must have heard the gunfire and seen the damage because outside, sirens blared. The noise startled me. I hadn’t heard sirens except for on the vids and the net and that one time in the dark levels. I’d almost forgotten what they sounded like.

  “Soldiers coming.” Tag said. “Time to go.” Tag looked at the woman as if struggling to make a decision. He finally shouldered his weapon, strode to the woman, and grabbed her hand. He jerked the ring from her finger leaving a trickle of blood where he’d scraped across her knuckle. He left her in her room with the empty cradles and kicked the door closed. Tag took my gun from me and pulled one of the Orbitals from his jacket pocket. He strapped it to Jay’s wrist. He indicated Jay should give the baby he had over to me.

  The one he held had a yellow bow in its hair. Another girl. I briefly wondered if he’d noticed his twins were both girls, but he didn’t seem to be focusing on that. He focused on the Orbital and the wonder if we’d all get out of this building alive.

  Tag readjusted the strap so it didn’t cut off the blood to Jay’s hand. “Right about now, they’re suspecting the New Youths, Jay and Jen Savage, of an insane act of attacking a regent. Soldiers will have already been dispatched to your house.”

  Tag started calculating numbers on the Orbital screen. “You’ll never get to her in time. She’ll be implicated and ex-ed before you ever get to LA. So you’re going to have to do this in steps. You have no other choice if you want to have a happy ending. I’ve set this to get you to 1986. You’ll need a babysitter. This is close to your own time which I did on purpose so you wouldn’t stand out, but don’t call a relative, that’s the first place the soldiers will be looking for you. Call a babysitting service, call clergy of some kind. Just make sure it’s someone you don’t know but feel okay leaving the kids with. You won’t want to keep jumping time with the twins in tow, so don’t even look at me like that.”

  Jay smoothed out the scowl on his face and listened as Tag explained how to set the date timer and the jump calculations. I listened intently thinking of how nice such information would have been back when I was trying to escape with the Orbital. The babies made listening hard, since they were still crying, but I rocked them back and forth, thinking my arms might fall off from the weight of them. They settled down into whimpers.

  Even the regent’s wife pounding on the door didn’t seem to bother them once I rocked them.

  Tag stayed focused in spite of all the noise and distraction. “You’ll want to get back to Jen at least three hours ago. From the way the windows look, you’ll be gone before they can get to you. They won’t expect you to plan so well because, frankly, most of the soldiers don’t understand the windows well enough to calculate that many steps ahead. They can’t play chess, either. You want to jump with Jen and the other twins to the exact time you leave 1986. You’ll be kind of stuck at that point. The Orbital isn’t exactly made to hold the figurative weight of that many people. I honestly don’t know that you could take all four babies and the two of you without losing someone. So you’ll be stuck in that time, got it? Don’t contact people you know and love because it will get you caught. Your lives depend on it. The soldiers have Orbitals. Orbitals can find other Orbitals. You’ll want to destroy yours as soon as possible. There’s money in your pocket.” Tag placed a wallet in Jay’s shirt pocket. “Move to a different country with the kids and have a nice life, okay? It was great knowing you for this last hour or so. I hope I don’t see you again.”

  Jay didn’t seem to take offense to Tag’s abrupt directions and dismissal, but he looked at me as if realizing he wouldn’t be seeing me again, either. “Thanks, Summer. You saved us, dude. You are the coolest person I k
now. We won’t forget you. You’re leaving, too, right?”

  “Yeah. I’m leaving.”

  “Then I won’t worry about you. It’s too bad they did this to us. It’s too bad they didn’t mean it when they said they were making the world better, because they really could’ve, you know? You could’ve saved the future once you graduated biology school and all that.”

  I smiled. “Or I could’ve made it worse. Who knows? Anyway . . . take care of your family.”

  “Yeah. I’m all over that. Hide yourself somewhere awesome, with a beach and yacht, right?”

  “Right.”

  He hugged me. Since I was holding two squirming babies, the hug was a bit awkward. Jay took the babies from me, looking relieved to be holding them and seeming like someone practiced in balancing two kids in his arms. He smiled as he tapped the screen. He and the babies faded into the background.

  Tag took my hand. “Let’s go.”

  “We’ve gotta go see Winter.”

  He was shaking his head before I finished the sentence. “No way. Did you not hear what I told your friend?”

  “Yes, I heard.” Pounding at the door had finally resulted into splintered wood. The regent’s wife was making an exit. I tried to talk over the noise and the noise of the sirens getting louder. “But Tag, she dies because of an STD. If I warn her, she’ll be careful, she’ll have a full life.”

  “And you’ll be changing the future! Isn’t it bad enough we sent six people to the past who don’t belong there? I would have sent them to the future if I thought they’d have a chance of surviving there. Who knows what kind of damage we’ve done. And you want to do more? You can’t save the world! Hasn’t everything you’ve seen over the last day taught you that?”

  “I’m not trying to save the world. I’m trying to save one person. Take me to my sister!”

  He took a deep breath as though about to yell at me again, but the squeal of brakes outside cut him off. The regent’s wife splintered the door enough I could see her eyes glaring with fury at us. “I’ll have you ex-ed!” she yelled. “We’ll find you wherever you go!”